With a great deal of interest and approval, I read the Aug. 19 Marin Voice op-ed piece by T. J. Nelsen, “When it comes to governing, individual freedom is best” (Aug. 19).

I was born in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, several years after National Socialism (later known as Nazism) took control of Germany. Some four years in World War II I grew up under German occupation. It was followed by establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFR) in October 1944 and my life of 13 years under that system. I escaped from SFR in early 1956 in search for freedom.

Prompted by T. J. Nelsen’s excellent piece, I wish here to share a few of my authentic experiences about freedom and the life under socialism.

Our family was in the upper middle class, which the new government defined as “bourgeoisie” and “exploiter of the people.” I can never forget how armed police came to our house and ransacked it in search of “anti-socialist” books and materials. It was also determined that we had an “excess of living space,” ordering that we prepare the biggest bedroom in the house for an
army officer who would live with us.

Our life afterwards rapidly deteriorated. The government immediately implemented “monetary reform.” In fact, it was just confiscation of wealth. It did not matter how much money one had in the bank or under the pillow; no individual could get new money over a certain very modest amount. So poverty, in fact, was equalized.

Then, due to shortages of food and other essentials for life, people received “coupons” in accordance with George Orwell’s great book, “Animal Farm”: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” There were three types: yellow, green and red. Each colored coupon enabled its owner to receive defined essentials for existence such as bread. Those individuals defined as “bourgeois” and “enemies of the people” would get none, while the ones who were “border line” got yellow coupons and then some got green. The red coupons were reserved for supporters of the system who received the maximum needed supply of the essentials.

The government was against old-fashioned family and religious beliefs. For example, in my high school we had to write an essay on “I owe to my mother only a few gallons of milk”; or another one, “If God is all powerful, can he create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it.”

It was not officially forbidden to go to church, but churches were watched and people reported who visited them. These reports were kept with others in the files of the state secret police.

The Yugoslav socialisms were regarded in the West as an alternative to the Soviet Russia model. Yet, as Professor James Robertson wrote about this alternative in the article, “The Life and Death of Yugoslav Socialism”: “In the final decade of the Cold War, however, the country descended into crisis. The self-management system collapsed, leaving a crippling $20 billion foreign debt in its wake. Amid economic crisis, republican politicians in Serbia and Croatia broke party ranks and launched nationalist campaigns in hopes of salvaging what they could from their crumbling fiefdoms. A series of brutal 1990s civil wars tore through Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo.”

While some good ideas exist in socialism, overall this ideology is in essence totalitarian and historically shown to be an inevitable failure of serious consequences.

Michael Djordjevich, of San Rafael, is a financial executive and author of the 2016 two-volume book, “Decade of Illusions 1990-2000,” about U.S. involvement in the Yugoslav civil war. He immigrated to the U.S. from Belgrade in 1956.